A Bog’s Life
WHAT IS A WETLAND ANYWAY?
The black bear, just out of hibernation, was gorging on protein-rich grasses in the Old Marsh on a tidal river in Nova Scotia when Harry Thurston saw it. He’d been observing what he calls the “pageant of life” on the marsh for nearly 30 years from his window. This was his first bear. “I’m endlessly fascinated by the pattern of use of the marsh by wildlife,” says Thurston, the author of A Place Between the Tides: A Naturalist’s Reflections on the Salt Marsh. “I feel privileged to witness that richness.”
So what is a wetland, you ask? A marsh is one of five officially defined wetland types in Canada—along with swamp, bog, fen,
